The scope of the HR function

Peter Drucker, the renowned management thinker, observed in the early 1960s:

Personnel administration . . . is largely a collection of incidental techniques without much internal cohesion. As personnel administration conceives the job of managing worker and work, it is partly a fi le clerk’s job, partly a housekeeping job, partly a social worker’s job and partly fi re-fi ghting to head off union trouble or to settle it . . . [they] are necessary chores. I doubt though that they should be put together in one department for they are a hodge-podge (Drucker, 1961: 269–70).

It is interesting to compare the scope of HR activities that Drucker referred to in the 1960s with the most recent and infl uential framework of HR activities, the UK Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD) HR Profession Map, published in 2009 (http://www.

cipd.co.uk). The HR Profession Map details the ten areas in which the CIPD believes practising HR managers should demonstrate expertise:

● Organization design: including job design, organization structure, and change.

● Organization development: including culture management and development.

● Resourcing and talent planning: including resourcing, succession planning, and induction.

● Learning and talent development: including training, development, and coaching.

● Performance and reward: including performance management and reward management.

● Employee engagement: ensuring a positive employee working experience aligned with organizational objectives.

● Employee relations: including union relations, disciplinary and grievance procedures, welfare, and legal compliance.

● Service delivery and information: including the provision of management information and data, and HR service delivery to the line.

● Strategy insights and solutions: including the application of knowledge of strategic issues to the design and delivery of HR strategy.

THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF THE HR FUNCTION 65

● Leading and managing the HR function: leading and managing a ‘fi t for purpose’ HR function.

(http://www.cipd.co.uk).

The CIPD developed its HR Map in consultation with leading HR professionals and has used it as the basis for the content of its CIPD professional accreditation courses. Although Drucker regarded the role of HR as too varied back in the 1960s, it is evident that it has grown further still today. We can see that HR’s role comprises a range of activities that impact directly on employees’ experience of working in the organization, as well as activities at an organiza-tional level. In the CIPD’s model, each of the ten professional areas can be undertaken at four different levels of seniority, ranging from basic administration support, through policy devel-opment, to strategic leadership.

The CIPD’s HR Profession Map provides us with a useful summary of the range of activities that fall within the remit of the HR department today. However, a brief historical overview sets these within a context that can help to explain how and why this mixture of roles, or ‘hodge-podge’ in Drucker’s terms, has come about.

Whilst some writers have traced the roots of the HR role back as far as medieval times, when craftspeople organized themselves into guilds in an effort to improve their working conditions ( Jamrog and Overholt, 2004), it is generally accepted that the HR function as we know it today has its roots in the development of industrialized organizations that has taken place since the 1800s (Ogilvie and Stork, 2003). The earliest equivalent roles were those performed by the social reformers and welfare offi cers who worked, often on a voluntary basis, in the emergent industrialized organizations of the 19th century (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2008). Their primary concern was the welfare of workers in what were often harsh and unhealthy working conditions (Tyson, 1995). Today, this concern with workers’

wellbeing is manifest in occupational health, wellbeing at work initiatives, and employee assistance programmes (Torrington et al, 2005), falling within the CIPD’s ‘employee relations’

domain.

Another development that infl uenced the growth of the modern HR function was the Sci-entifi c Management movement of the late 19th century. SciSci-entifi c Management was con-cerned with the analysis of jobs to determine optimal effi ciency and effectiveness, and was often associated with the breakdown of jobs into discrete elements whose performance could be closely specifi ed and supervised (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004). HR tasks such as job design, selection, and training were particularly important under this movement ( Jamrog and Overholt, 2004) and continue to be elements of the modern HR role under the CIPD’s headings of ‘resourcing and talent planning’, ‘learning and talent development’, and ‘organi-zation design’, although overlaid with a more sophisticated understanding of human motiva-tion and performance. Scientifi c Management principles can still, however, be seen in modern automobile production lines and fast-food restaurants with their clear sequencing and sepa-rating of tasks. In Chapters 9 and 10 we explore the core themes of talent management and HR development in more detail.

Along with the growing size of fi rms was an increasing need for record-keeping in relation to the employment of people, including dealing with job applications and the maintenance of employee records such as sickness absence and annual leave. According to Marchington and Wilkinson (2008), this aspect of the HR role came to the fore particularly during the

1940s as employment legislation started to become increasingly formalized with a focus on justice, fairness, and equity of treatment. The ongoing need for HR departments to maintain accurate records and undertake administrative work can be seen in recent HR functional roles typologies emphasizing the importance of excellence in administrative procedures (Storey, 1992; Ulrich, 1997a) and in the CIPD’s heading of ‘service delivery and information’.

Whilst other aspects of the HR role that we have looked at so far have been largely unitary in focus and concerned with the management of individual workers rather than collectivi-ties, there has been another important thread dating back to the Industrial Revolution, which has been the responsibility for dealing with unions (Tyson, 1995). This aspect of the HR role became especially prominent from the 1940s onwards and during the 1960s and 1970s when trade union membership and power were at their peak (Torrington et al, 2005;

Marchington and Wilkinson, 2008), but continues today to be considered by many HR de-partments and line managers to be a crucial element of the HR role within workplaces with high levels of unionization or where works councils are in place. Linked with this has been HR’s role in the legal side of the employment relationship and ensuring compliance. This aspect of the role came to the fore through the 20th century as employment became in-creasingly regulated, covering areas such as diversity, equality, and human rights. HR’s task is to ensure legal compliance, the fair and just treatment of workers, and the avoidance of costly tribunals and appeals (Flood et al, 1995; Ogilvie and Stork, 2003; Jamrog and Overholt, 2004). The development of employment law as an area of distinctive expertise has helped to create an environment where the occupation of HR manager could be seen as a profession.

These tasks broadly fall within the CIPD’s remit of ‘employee relations’, which we explore further in Chapter 11.

One of the most significant developments that has affected the role of the HR depart-ment in recent years has been the idea that the policies and practices used by organiza-tions in the management of people should be linked in some way to their overall strategic objectives (Truss and Gratton, 1994; Ulrich, 1997a). This notion that HR management can make a direct contribution to a firm’s performance emerged for the first time in the 1980s, during an era when capitalism was undergoing a fundamental shift towards the right-wing ideals espoused by the governments of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. Whilst the idea that people should be managed strategically was not new, the notion that an organization’s HR policies and practices could them-selves contribute to the creation of advantage was. This has created particular challenges for HR practitioners, as operating at a strategic level is about shaping rather than sup-porting business strategy. To do this successfully, HR practitioners need to develop a range of interrelated skills and an ability to think strategically. This, in turn, needs to be underpinned by business or commercial acumen which includes business understanding and cross-functional experience. The CIPD reflects this in several areas of its Professional Map including the areas of ‘resourcing and talent planning’ and ‘performance and reward’. The CIPD’s ‘employee engagement’ heading also refers to the importance of aligning employees with organizational aims and objectives, and we focus on engagement in Chapter 12.

Alongside the move to make the HR function ‘strategic’ came the idea that HR depart-ments should also be contributing much more to the management of organizational

THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF THE HR FUNCTION 67 change programmes (Ulrich, 1997a; Caldwell, 2001; Alfes et al, 2010b). The management of

change, whilst clearly linked to ideals of SHRM, went beyond this by suggesting that HR departments should become more involved in the full range of organizational change and transformation activities, not just those directly linked to the HR department. The CIPD’s headings of ‘organization design’ and ‘organization development’ contain specifi c refer-ence to the importance of change management, and we explore these topics further in Chapters 9 and 15.